ActiveGrowth
Menu

Are You Ignoring the First and Most Vital Conversion?

Shane Melaugh 22 comments

The purpose of your website is to bring you more business. Because of this, you're most likely to focus your time and attention on the end of the funnel - the part where you make money.

As important as it is to optimize those last steps in the funnel, it can also be a dangerous distraction from what might be the most important conversion your website has to achieve.

Watch the video below to see what this most important conversion is and discover 5 simple steps for optimizing it:

Related Links

What's your take on "attention optimization"? Which of the five steps can you implement on your site? Let me know by leaving a comment below! And as usual, any questions you have are also very welcome!

Shane's Signature

22 comments

Comments are closed. This discussion is archived from the original site.

  1. greg

    Hi Shane

    I think you are bang on the money - Attention, it' like the most important thing from a design perspective.

    However I wanted to ask a - why is it that you don't have a search facility on your blog?

    you have great content but so difficult to find - is it on purpose?

    1. Shane

      Hi Greg,

      Good point about the search function. The main reason is actually because I think WP search is useless and never use it myself. But I'll have to see if I can add some form of search function back to the site.

      In terms of making my content easier to find, I'm actually working on something for that. I'll be testing a new concept soon and it might find its way into our themes or into a plugin, if it's successful. :)

    2. Joe Garma

      Greg, I've wondered that myself.

      Am guessing that it's intentional, though an Archive page sorted by category would be useful, at least for me.

      1. Greg

        I guess we were all thinking it..?

        :-) @Shane Thanks for reply

      2. Shane

        I've added a search bar to the sidebar. Don't blame me for rubbish search results, though. :D

        My problem is this: I'd like to have better search results, but I don't want to install any plugins that slow down the site... don't know what the best solution is, yet.

    3. Garth

      I usually just use Google to search sites [site:website.com keywords] and as long as they are indexed, I get a good selection of pages with some relevance to whatever I am looking for to choose from.

      1. Shane

        That's what I do most often as well. And I know I could add a Google site search widget to my site, but I hate the idea of having Google branding on my site...

  2. Tim

    Shane,
    I have to admit I never thought of attention as the first conversion. Very insightful. I now have to go and rethink everything I've been doing on my site. But that's a good thing.

    Thanks for the great post.

    Tim

  3. daniel garcia

    Hi Shane,
    I was also thinking about navigation through your site and been kinda strugguling with it on my own site.
    I liked the footer you had on your last theme, that helped me get to posts I was following through.

    1. Shane

      Thanks for your input! I've added a tabbed widget to the sidebar that will hopefully help with navigation as well.

    1. Shane

      Thank you, Sandra! I've been tweaking my video setup for a while now. Good for it to get some recognition. :)

  5. Shawn

    Hey Shane, long time customer here. Love the content, curious to know what device you use to record your videos? The quality is top notch.

    1. Shane

      Thanks, Shawn!

      This is recorded using a Panasonic G6 camera with a Sigma 30mm f2.8 lens. The audio is recorded with the Rhode Podcaster Mic, using Audacity.

  6. Alexander G

    Great info and video! Just got into internet marketing and trying to learn as much as possible. A lot to learn!

    Rgds,
    Alexander

  7. Deborah

    Thanks Shane.... Everything you shared makes perfect sense. I'll be making some major changes to website I'm currently building. I have to admit that I made most of the mistakes you mentioned. This video alone will make a huge difference in how I set up everything going forward. I'm making notes and soaking in every one of your posts. Best education I've found out there. Even reading through all the comments sheds new light on many aspects of this entire process.

  8. Marc

    Wow I can believe how a year and a half later this advice is still relevant. What is even more amazing however is that most websites fail at least 3 or 4 of the five checklist items--then they wonder why they are not getting the results they expected. The saddest bit perhaps is that many of these same sites have no form of marketing analytics or even Google analytics to measure what they are trying to accomplish--let alone the SEO basics.

    Anyway sorry for the rant Shane but resources like your site should be required reading for anyone doing business online or off. Get doing your thing bro.

    1. Shane

      Thanks for your reply, Marc! I suspect the advice in this post will stay relevant for a long time, because this really is a mistake that the majority of websites make. I'm not seeing a major change in that. But it's also an opportunity to do better and gain an edge for the rest of us.